John Cochrane on the minimum wages debate

What caught my eye is the "family with two kids,"  "...millions of working families." It paints a grim picture: mom, dad, two kids, trying to survive one wage earner's full-time minimum-wage job.

My thought: What planet do the president's advisers live on? Come take a look, say, at the south side of Chicago, where I grew up and live, and where President Obama spent many formative years as a community organizer and so knows it even better. Is the first-order problem of these neighborhoods that its residents live in intact families with two kids, one full-time wage earner, trying to live on the wages from a full-time minimum wage job, but  having a tough time making ends meet? Is there anyone like this? The tragedy of the neighborhoods around where I live, and President Obama used to live, is the vast number of people with no job at all.  How does raising the minimum wage for the few who have a minimum-wage job help the vast majority who have no job at all?

....

And of course, that tax comes out of the very pockets it's going back in to.  Back to Greg Mankiw's question about how much the wage should be: on this theory there is no limit!  If you pay them $20, then customers have $20 more to spend. If you pay them $50, then they have $50 more to spend.



Now we really have crossed the line, from serious economics, to fiddling while Rome burns, to believing in magic.

пособия на бедность

два мира - два шапиро.

в оккупированной натою республике српска (босния), скромный госслужащий на пенсии, такой, как учитель, может получать пенсию в 500+ евро, что несколько выше местной средней зарплаты.
но не любой учитель, а тот, у кого есть довоенный (=югославский) стаж
потому что новое государство отвечает по социальным гарантиям старого, несмотря на то, что это старое было построено в долг.

новое же государство особых гарантий не дает. хотя, конечно, госслужащие (учителя) в плане пенсий обеспечены куда лучше, чем работники ткацких фабрик, конкурирующие с марианскими островами.